Quanta Magazine

Online/Digital

Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation to enhance public understanding of science. Why Quanta? Albert Einstein called photons “quanta of light.” Our goal is to “illuminate science.”
Our reporters focus on developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and the basic life sciences. The best traditional news organizations provide excellent reporting on applied areas of science such as health, medicine, technology, engineering and the environment. We strive to complement and augment existing media coverage. Source

Recent Articles

quantamagazine.org
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But something different happened with the hybrids on Daphne: When they matured, they became a population distinct from Daphne’s other bird species by inbreeding extensively and exclusively — siblings mating with siblings, and parents mating with their offspring. In short, an incipient hybrid species, which the researchers dubbed the Big Bird lineage, had emerged within two generations. Today, six generations have passed, and the island is home to around 30 Big Bird finches.

quantamagazine.org
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These are the easiest tilings of the plane. They are “monohedral,” in that they consist of only one type of polygonal tile; they are “edge-to-edge,” meaning that corners of the polygons always match up with other corners; and they are “regular,” because the one tile being used repeatedly is a regular polygon whose side lengths are all the same, as are its interior angles. Our examples above use equilateral triangles (regular triangles), squares (regular quadrilaterals) and regular hexagons.

quantamagazine.org
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Mathematical proofs are elaborate theoretical arguments that often say little about actual numbers and calculations — the concrete values non-mathematicians think of as “solving a math problem.” Occasionally, though, theoretical proofs lead to explicit results. This was the case with an exciting sequence of events that culminated last month. The story takes place in the mathematical field of number theory.

quantamagazine.org
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It is human nature to want to know where we came from. Individually, we investigate our family lineages to discover ancestors lost to history. Collectively, scientists examine data from a vast array of sources, ranging from ancient fossils to current genomes, to determine where humanity itself originated, and how we came to be who and where we are as a species today. In the past decade, studies in this area have been revolutionized by the plunge in gene sequencing costs.

quantamagazine.org
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At first glance, the big news coming out of this summer’s conference on the theory of computing appeared to be something of a letdown. For more than 40 years, researchers had been trying to find a better way to compare two arbitrary strings of characters, such as the long strings of chemical letters within DNA molecules. The most widely used algorithm is slow and not all that clever: It proceeds step-by-step down the two lists, comparing values at each step.

quantamagazine.org
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Jennifer Marshall Graves, an Australian biologist, is probably best known for a dire prediction: the human Y chromosome, which makes males male, could disappear in the next 5 million years. In the last 190 million years, the number of genes on the Y has plummeted from more than 1,000 to roughly 50, a loss of more than 95 percent. The X chromosome, in contrast, stands strong at roughly 1,000 genes.

quantamagazine.org
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DNA stores our genetic code in an elegant double helix. But some argue that this elegance is overrated. “DNA as a molecule has many things wrong with it,” said Steven Benner, an organic chemist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Florida. Nearly 30 years ago, Benner sketched out better versions of both DNA and its chemical cousin RNA, adding new letters and other additions that would expand their repertoire of chemical feats.

quantamagazine.org
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In September 2014, Christa Schleper embarked on an unusual hunting expedition in Slovenia. Instead of seeking the standard quarry of deer or wild boar, Schleper was in search of Lokiarchaeota, or Loki, a newly discovered group of organisms first identified near deep-sea vents off the coast of Norway. The simple, single-celled creatures have captured scientists’ interest because they are unlike any other organism known to science.

quantamagazine.org
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There are moments when we witness an animal do something so far outside its presumed repertoire of behavior — something so uncannily human — that we can never look at that animal, or ourselves, the same way again. For Irena Schulz, one of those moments happened on an otherwise ordinary day in August, 2007. Schulz lived in Schererville, Ind., where she managed a sanctuary for abandoned parrots.

quantamagazine.org
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Inspired by the electron-donators, scientists began to wonder whether microbes could also do the reverse and directly ingest electrons as a source of energy. Researchers focused their search on a group of microbes called methanogens, which are known for making methane. Most methanogens aren’t strict metal eaters.

Selecting a term

Phrases (e.g. "cloud computing") — use quotes to keep the terms together

Twitter handles (e.g. @username) — returns those who have mentioned or replied to
given user

Names (e.g. "David Pogue")

Hashtags (e.g. #sxsw, #london2012)

Bio details (e.g. vegan, Olympics, father)

Advanced terms

Muck Rack's Advanced Search allows for many boolean operators.

AND

Find results that mention multiple specified terms, use AND or
+. For example, ensure each result contains both Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg by
searching Musk AND Zuckerberg or Musk + Zuckerberg.

OR

Use the operators OR or , to broaden your search when you'd like either of
multiple terms to appear in results. (This is the default behavior of our search when no operators
are used). For example, results will contain either cake or cookie by searching cake OR cookie or cake,cookie

NOT

Use NOT or - to subtract results from your search. For
example, searching Disney will yield results about the Walt Disney Company as well as Walt Disney
World Resort. To exclude mentions of Disney World, search for Disney -World or Disney
NOT World.

Phrases

When using one of these operators with a phrase, enclose it in quotation marks. For example, you can
find results about smartphones excluding Apple's iPhone 4S by searching smartphone -"iPhone
4s".

Exact case matching or punctuation

If you're searching for a brand name or keyword that relies on specific punctuation marks or capitalization, you can
find results that match your exact query by adding matchcase: before the keyword you're searching for, like matchcase:E*TRADE .

Combining operators

Use parentheses to separate multiple
boolean phrases. For example, to find journalists talking about having fun in Disney World or
Disneyland, search for ("disney world" OR disneyland) AND fun.

Asterisk

An asterisk can be used to search for any variation of a root word truncated by the asterisk. For example, searching for admin* will return results for administrator, administration, administer, administered, etc.

Near

A near operator is an AND operator where you can control the distance between the words. You can vary the distance the near operation uses by adding a forward slash and number (between 0-99) such as strawberries NEAR/10 "whipped cream", which means the strawberries must exist within 10 words of "whipped cream".